


Some Other Way

by speccygeekgrrl



Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Canon Compliant, Gen, Songfic, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, but he doesn't have a good way to do it, this is a bad way to get someone's attention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 11:34:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13270590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: She looks right through him most of the time. He wonders what it would take to get her to actually see him.





	Some Other Way

**Author's Note:**

> Okay this is depressing AF and I'm sorry, but I've been keeping up with Suicide Buddies and then I heard [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrEsUhF8w40) ([[lyrics]](https://genius.com/The-extra-lens-some-other-way-lyrics)) and my hell brain went "canon Max canon Max canon Max" and... goddammit, I like writing happy and fulfilled Max but I'm so far from canon at this point in my series that it's kind of jarring to leave that all aside and go back to basics.
> 
> Anyways. Depressing topic but not a depressing ending.

It wasn't the first time he'd thought about doing something drastic. Hell, it wasn't the first time he'd _started_ to do something drastic. Being Kinga's second banana had provided Max with myriad opportunities to entertain the morbid thought that the only way he'd ever catch her attention would be to kill himself, and even then he wasn't sure that would work. 

He'd come close, though, a handful of times. Max kept the relics in a box to remind himself that the dark urge wasn't something he had to give into even if he indulged it partway: only the knot of the noose, the rest of the rope hacked into six inch pieces and unraveled into strands over the course of the four days it took him to stop wanting to die every time she looked through him; the empty bottle still dusted with the powder of the pills he'd crushed into a pot of tea, the one bitter sip he'd taken enough to make him pour the rest down the drain; one large and bloodstained shard of glass from when he put his fist through his bathroom mirror because he couldn't stand the sight of his own face for another second, then clutched the shard in one shaking hand and considered his wrists for a while before he picked the glass out of his knuckles and bandaged his hand.

Those times, though, the fuckups that led to those times, those were minor compared to this. He might have just killed Jonah. He'd never really intended for Jonah to get hurt, he just needed to get him out of the way, and Reptilicus Metallicus wasn't even done swallowing Jonah before Max's heart dropped into his feet at the realization of what he'd just done. He'd thought a bold, assertive move would get Kinga to pay attention to him, but that had backfired spectacularly, she'd stormed off in a fury, and now... now he was sitting here in his room with his box full of suicidal ideation that hadn't gone anywhere open on his lap, and he wondered if he would actually get somewhere with it this time. 

_She wouldn't find you,_ he told himself, but that didn't stop the shadowed parts of his brain from listing off his options for one last desperate grab for her attention. _She wouldn't come looking._

_**There's always Moon 14.**_ Oh, that was a thought. He entertained it for a moment. _**You could throw yourself into the Kingachrome tank.**_ That was easy to dismiss, though. Dying was one thing, but drowning in a terrible movie was a hell that Max didn't think he deserved, even if he'd just become a murderer. 

_There's no point if she's not the one to find you, and she wouldn't be the one to find you there._ No need to mentally scar poor Ardy for the rest of his life. Max had done enough damage to other people today.

_**Her lab, then.**_ Okay, that was full of ways to die, half of which he'd narrowly missed already when he wasn't intending to kill himself. _**You could open a gas line.**_

_Not on the Moon._ He shook his head to clear the thought. Nothing that would be dangerous to anyone else. Especially not to her. She couldn't miss him if she died too, and the point was for him to stick in her mind forever. 

_**You know exactly how many bladed objects there are in the lab.**_ That was true. She usually left cleaning up to him; he'd handled every scalpel and box cutter and razor blade in that room at some point, cleaned them and put them neatly away. Any one of those could do the job and there were seventeen of them in that room. _**Imagine her cleaning your blood off her desk. That'd make her notice.**_

_It'd only annoy her,_ he thought. _She'd just get a Bonehead to clean it anyways._ He couldn't imagine her getting her hands dirty like that, but he could easily imagine her impatiently tapping her foot while someone else did it. _No._

_**Stop being so precious about it, you coward.**_ He put the lid back on the box and tucked it back into his desk, dropping his head into his hands with a sigh. His brain only started lobbing insults like that when he'd already decided not to go through with it. It'd never get him what he wanted, after all. There had to be some other way for him to get her to see him. Sure, none of his attempts had worked yet, but he'd be damned if he couldn't come up with some other way to make her love him.


End file.
